Teen Who Ate Mushrooms Improving After Transplant

OTHER NEWS TO NOTE - WEST

February 10, 1996

SAN FRANCISCO — A 13-year-old girl's condition is improving after she received a liver transplant because her own was damaged by poisonous wild mushrooms she ate in spaghetti sauce, a hospital spokesman said Friday. Health officials in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, advised the public Friday not to pick wild mushrooms after a 43-year-old man died there this week in another case apparently involving poisonous wild mushrooms. The 13-year-old girl, two brothers and her mother fell seriously ill after mistakenly picking and eating the highly toxic ''death cap'' variety, which can cause liver damage and sometimes death. The girl's condition was listed as serious but stable at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.